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Judgement Day Update: Headless Ape Bot

It goes by the name of Robosimian, an ape-like robot that was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Designed and built by JPL and Stanford engineers, RoboSimian was a recent competitor in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a competition where participants attempt to create strong, dextrous, and flexible robots that could aid in disasters as well as search and rescue missions.

Admittedly, the robot looks kind of creepy, due in no small part to the fact that it doesn’t have a head. But keep in mind, this machine is designed to save your life. As part of the DARPA challenge, they are intended to go places that would be too dangerous for humans. So I imagine whatever issues a person may have with its aesthetics would disappear when they spotted one crawling to their rescue.

To win the challenge, the semi-autonomous robots will have to complete difficult tasks that demonstrate its dexterity and ambulatory ability. These include removing debris from a doorway, using a tool to break through a concrete panel, connecting a fire hose to a pipe and turning it on, and driving a vehicle at a disaster site. The competition, which began in 2012, will have its first trials in December.

Many of the teams in the challenge are creating fairly humanoid robots but RoboSimian, as its name implies, looks a bit more like an ape. And there is a reason for this: relying on four very flexible limbs, each of which has a three-fingered hand, the robot is much better suited to climbing and hanging, much like our Simian cousins. This makes it well-suited for the DARPA-set requirement of climbing a ladder, and will no doubt come in handy when the robot has to navigate difficult environments.

The demo video, featured below, shows the robots hands doing dextrous tasks as well as doing some pull ups. There’s also a computer renderings of what the final machine may look like. Check it out: